Saturday Games

[Jemfy]

Point of curiosity - how many home Saturday fixtures have we had postponed, and how many away?

How many home Saturday fixtures have Wellingborough Town had postponed/rearranged?

These things might go some way to explaining the big defecit. In a year with bad rain issues, on a pitch which is prone to flooding issues, plus with a good cup run in the Vase for us. Plus there were home games rescheduled for the junior cup too of course.

I think people can look at the numbers and scream consipiracy, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody else ground shares with another side.

What is Wellingborough's split?

[SouthRushdenJFC]

The trouble is that the UCL drip feed the fixtures so it's almost impossible to say this was cancelled and that was cancelled etc.

It seems that everytime we get a new batch of fixtures, the away games are on a Saturday the homes games on a Tuesday

[Formic]

Point of curiosity - how many home Saturday fixtures have we had postponed, and how many away?

How many home Saturday fixtures have Wellingborough Town had postponed/rearranged?

These things might go some way to explaining the big defecit. In a year with bad rain issues, on a pitch which is prone to flooding issues, plus with a good cup run in the Vase for us. Plus there were home games rescheduled for the junior cup too of course.

I think people can look at the numbers and scream consipiracy, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody else ground shares with another side.

What is Wellingborough's split?

People will need to draw their own conclusions of course, but I thought I'd provide the basic data, and will try to do so again.

As you'll see from the fixtures table on our website http://www.afcdiamonds.com/201213-senio ... nd-results , we've had three blanks Saturdays where we were due to play home games and four blank when due to play away (arguably its even at 4-4 if you include the Boxing Day home game).
We did lose two scheduled home Saturday games due to the Vase (the Ashington game was on a date that we'd have had a blank Saturday anyway).
We lost one Saturday due to a home "minor" cup game, and one to an away "minor" cup game.
The point about ground sharing is of course a valid one, as I've always stressed - but as we saw last weekend, many of our opponents have reserve teams that fill in any gaps in their schedules anyway.

The Doughboys website isn't being updated any more, so I can't estimate how many postponements they've had, but the home / away mix for all UCL Prem teams using the same method as in the first post is thus:

Team Home Away
AFC Kempston Rovers 15 14
Blackstones FC 14 12
Boston Town 12 13
Cogenhoe United 14 14
Deeping Rangers 15 14
Desborough Town 12 15
Harborough Town 13 13
Holbeach United 15 13
Huntingdon Town 13 13
Irchester United 11 15
Long Buckby AFC 14 15
Newport Pagnell Town 13 14
Peterborough Northern Star 14 13
Quorn 13 16
Shepshed Dynamo 13 13
Sleaford Town 14 14
Spalding United 14 11
St Ives Town 15 14
Stewarts & Lloyds Corby 12 14
Wellingborough Town 14 12
Yaxley 15 13

[Formic]

To add a little more spice to Formic's OP.

After the league fixtures have settled down a bit I've noticed our first midweek away league game (not on a Saturday) is Sileby on Tues 26th Feb.

The only other midweek away game scheduled this season appears to be Whitworths (next door) and that's on Easter Bank Holiday Monday, so hardly midweek.

I'll let you make you're own minds as to the ethics behind this ......... ;)

That's an excellent point - noting that the one we did have scheduled before Christmas was at Bugbrooke, but was reversed due to Bugbrooke having parking issues for midweek games. When the three outstanding games to be scheduled (all home games) are added, they are all likely to be in midweek, as the only free Saturday left is when the Doughboys are at home - so we'll have had 9 midweek 7:45pm home games.

As I said, the UCL had lots of scope to even things up until they published the March / April fixtures recently, but these only seemed to make the situation even less balanced - for example moving the Potton away game to 27th April - a date the Doughboys are not playing (all their home games have been given dates), so an obvious candidate for a Diamonds home game, and leaving the original date of 23rd March free for both Diamonds and Potton.

[Trek]

I'd assumed the reason the UCL was one of the few leagues that doesn't publish a fixture list for the whole season "in advance" was to allow any "smoothing out" necessary due to early season cup games, but it doesn't look too smooth when you consider this list, even allowing for ground sharing / FA Competitions etc in a 37 Saturday season.

Based on this analysis are there any plans to formally approach the UCL fixtures secretary and request the rationale behind the absence of any "smoothing out" of our fixture list?

[Noddy]

The season comprises of 39 Saturday’s and were/are split as follows.
11 Aug WT FA Cup
18 Aug AFC
25 Aug WT FA Cup
1 Sep WT FA Vase
8 Sep WT
15 Sep AFC FA Vase
22 Sep WT
29 Sep AFC County Cup
6 Oct WT
13 Oct WT
20 Oct AFC
10 Nov AFC
17 Nov AFC FA Vase
28 Oct WT
3 Nov WT League Cup
24 Nov AFC postponed weather
1 Dec WT postponed weather
8 Dec No game
15 Dec WT
22 Dec WT postponed weather
29 Dec AFC postponed weather
5 Jan WT
12 Jan AFC
19 Jan WT postponed weather
26 Jan AFC postponed weather
2 Feb AFC
9 Feb WT
16 Feb No game
23 Feb WT
2 Mar No game
9 Mar WT
16 Mar AFC
23 Mar WT
30 Mar AFC
6 Apr WT
13 Apr AFC
20 Apr WT
27 Apr No game
4 May WT

Totals are:
21 WT Home, 17 League (3 postponed), 2 FA Cup, 1 FA Vase, 1 League Cup
14 AFC Home, 11 League (3 postponed), 2 FA Vase, 1 County Cup
4 No games

It does show what a difficult job the fixtures secretary has to keep everyone happy, and I think it is just unfortunate that we have been unlucky with the re-arranged games. We have three home games still to be arranged, all of which will presumably be on a Tuesday evening, but they have tried to alternate between WT and AFC since the New Year. It is a shame these home games couldn’t have been arranged for the three vacant Saturdays, but I guess it is quite difficult when you have Burton PW and ON Chenecks having to play all their home games on Saturdays. The early part of the season is almost entirely dependant on Cup games.

[Formic]

If the three dates in 2013 with "no game" were AFC dates it would look pretty well balanced.

Clearly it gets more tricky to slot in games as the season progresses - but for example had the Potton away game been left on 23rd March where it was (and where it could still be as far as I can see), we could have played Rothwell Corinths at home on Saturday 27th April as they don't have a game that day at present, and the D&D is free.